Every 15 Minutes

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Every 15 Minutes

The Every 15 Minutes program is an intensive two-day program focusing on high school junior and senior students which challenges them to think about drinking and driving, personal safety, the responsibility of making mature decisions and the impact their decisions have on family, friends, and many others.

The program has been structured to cover a two-day period in May every other year. At the beginning of the first day, a student will be escorted from his/her class Every 15 Minutes by the "grim reaper". The student will be brought to a command post on the school campus where he/she will be made up with cosmetics to represent the living dead. The student will then be escorted to a mock cemetery where they will place their tombstone. A uniformed officer will escort the student back to class and read the student's obituary to the entire class. To enhance the realism of the event the student will not respond to anyone the remainder of the school day. At the same time, police officers and chaplains will be making prearranged death notifications to the participant's parents. By the end of the first day a total of 50 students will make up a core participant group called the living dead.

During the mid-morning hours, the juniors and seniors from both high schools will be assembled at Livermore High School where they will witness a mock collision response, conducted by police, fire, paramedics, medical helicopter, and coroner. The student participants in the crash will become part of the living dead and will be involved in one of several outcomes as a result of the collision. One student will experience the arrest, booking and court procedures. One student will "die" at the scene and be transported to a mortuary and another will "die" at Valley Care Medical Center after being transported by ambulance or helicopter. All of these components will be filmed and the video will be shown at assemblies at each school.

During the evening, the living dead will participate in a retreat at a local hotel. During this workshop they will spend the night unable to contact friends or family, listen to television or radio. Each student will participate in team building exercises designed to support the program goal. On the second day, general assemblies will be held at Livermore and Granada High Schools where the students will relate their experiences to the remainder of the student body. We will also have actual victims present, and they will bring a sense of reality to this program.

This is obviously a complex, demanding, and emotionally draining event that will involve specialists throughout the community and several thousand hours of planning time. Our goal is simple: to save lives. Success will be difficult to measure but we expect that through involving this great number of participants and living this event together we will make a difference.